NEITI’s audit report, inaccurate, misleading – PPPRA

The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) has dismissed the audit report of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) which said the agency should remit N4.423 billion to the Federal Government.

The Executive Secretary of the PPPRA, Mr. Reginald Stanley, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday that NEITI’s report “is steeped in inaccuracies and gross misrepresentation of facts.

“The report has glaring potential to mislead the public and further cast aspersions on the activities of the PPPRA as a key administrator of the Petroleum Support Fund (PSF),” Stanley stated

On July 29, NEITI released its 2009-2011 audit report on the oil and gas sector, recommending that the PPPRA should remit N4.423 billion, arising from “over-recovery’’ collected to the Federation Account for the period in review.

The report also ordered other establishments to refund various sums of money to the Federal Government.

“The PPPRA wishes to state unequivocally that the statement credited to the NEITI chairman is misleading and a gross misrepresentation of facts.

“We note with dismay, NEITI’s admission to the fact that it had no absolute control of its sources of data as they were derived information and data provided through its own independent auditors as well as companies doing business in the sector.

“Such over-reliance on secondary data must have accounted for the glaringly flawed computations presented in the report,” the PPPRA chief told NAN.

Stanley explained that the N4.423 billion “over-recovery” that the PPPRA was asked to remit, was not correct, noting that only the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation still had an outstanding payment of about N3.98 billion to be paid into Central Bank of Nigeria’s account.